


Next time

by GwenChan



Category: Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: Blanket Permission, Established Relationship, F/M, Mild Sexual Content, Podfic Welcome, Post-Canon, Reincarnation, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:13:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25269646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GwenChan/pseuds/GwenChan
Summary: Hades ventures up on top, in Persephone's summer garden. He shouldn't, but sometimes he just misses his wife too much.Persephone is conflicted.
Relationships: Hades/Persephone (Hadestown)
Kudos: 32





	Next time

It has been the sudden rush of freezing air to make Persephone's hairs stand on her naked arms and warn her about her husband presence.  
No matter where he goes, Hades always brings with him the shadow and the cold. Grass and wildflowers wither and dry at his passage and nothing but death remains after his footprints.  
When he breathes, the air fills with a thick fog on an otherwise sunny day in late July. It's one of those sticky days, so thick with mugginess neither the water of the freshest stream nor the juice of the sweetest peach is enough to quench the thirst. 

Hades steps forward and streaks of sweat on Persephone's forehead turn into crystals. A bee lands on the shell of her ear.  
  
"What are you doing here?" she hisses, in the middle of the orchard, standing on top of a wooden ladder in precarious equilibrium. She has a straw bag attached to her hip and fingers sticky with the nectar of dark plums. "Don't you even think about it. It's not yet six months."

She takes a bit from the overripe fruit, the mild, sweetish taste of rotten on the tongue, then grimaces in disgust and spits the bite on the ground. It wasn't planned, but it lands right onto Hades' otherwise pristine shoes.

The King of the Underworld remains unfazed.  
  
"I know," he replies, drawing a large handkerchief from his jacket pocket and bending over to clean his shoes.   
"I just wanted to see you," he adds, the sun reflecting off the black lenses of his glasses when he tilts his head back to look at her. The corners of his lips bend into the hint of a smile as fingers ruined by the whip run to lower the glasses and show his eyes

It's a sincere look, limpid, almost sweet and Persephone's breath freezes in her throat. Her hands tremble in surprise, so much the half-eaten plum falls from her fingers. It crashes to the ground with a thud.  
  
"It's not your place here," she replies, voice trembling. Keeping a hard and distant tone is harder than expected. It's the same thing she told him the first time he dared to venture into Demeter's holy garden.  
  
Hades nods, silent as always. "I wanted to make an exception," he explains, picking up the half-eaten fruit. "I missed you too much."  
  
He brings the plum to his mouth, in a rapid and indirect kiss. In seconds, it has already dried and blackened from the touch of his ancient lips, until there are only ashes left.

"I mean it."

When he stretches out his arm, his palm facing upwards in a silent invitation and begins to murmur a melody, Persephone can't help but to sing with him. They are the notes of a now-forgotten song, of when gods and men still walked together. A memento of a young dreamer with nothing but his guitar and his voice, a poor boy who would have crossed hell for his beloved. She remembers despair so deep to melt the stone heart of Death itself.  
  
"You know the world needs me," she reminds her husband, going down the ladder until her bare feet touch the grass and flowers bloom at her passage. Hades's hand is still raised, his calloused palm now against Persephone's fingertips.  
"And I need you," he says, hugging her in a sudden and rough embrace. "Can't a lonely man have a little pity?"  
He whispers in her ear. 

His breath is cold and sends chills down her spine. It's been decades since Hades abandoned his fortress of engines and steel, of oil, fire and machines, to visit the world of mortals. He kneels, the soil dirting his legs and his elegant suit.   
"Just a little pity" he prays, this time taking off his glasses completely. For a moment he's back being the skittish, shy and insecure god who had introduced himself to her millennia ago, bringing nothing to offer but himself and a crumpled hat held tight in his hands.  
  
The man Persephone once loved. The goddess smiles at him, kneeling in turn, her dark hair cascading over amber skin. She has plum juice on his fingers, not pollen, and Hades's hat is of the best workmanship, but in pushing the king of the Underworld to the ground, lips on lips, they are again young and inexperienced lovers.  


A couple of sparrows fly high above, blurred spots against the blue of the sky in the corner of Persephone's eyes. She feels Hades' hands along her bare thighs. The smell of smoke and ashes fills her nostrils as she buries her face into the hollow of her husband's neck, her fingers digging into the god's biceps. Hades has always been a little rough as a lover, a little by nature, a little by inexperience, but never in a way that made Persephone fear.  
  
They have spent too many years in the chill of their misunderstanding. The dress slides off Persephone's shoulders to show the curve of her back shiny with sweat. Hades' tongue carries the taste of bitterness and gall as much as Persephone draws nectar from her lips.

A young girl, she had let Hades lie her down into the fresh grass to make her his, even before she signed her life away to to the Underworld with three pomegranate seeds. Now she is the one to push him to the ground, because this garden is her domain. She straddles him and undoes his belt and trousers with gestures carrying the experience given by habit and old age.  
  
She lolls her head back as she takes Hades's erect member in her hand to guide him inside her.  
  
  
  
"I met Orpheus again," Persephone comments later, adjusting her dress and re-braiding her hair. "He washes floors in a restaurant."  
  
This Orpheus has dark-purple eye-bags and a tangle of brown curls. He sweeps and cleans from dawn to dusk for people who don't even bother to look at him. He still sings. He always sings, with a voice that would make a stone give honey. He would swim in gold if he recorded and sold even a single song.

But he gives his music away for free, gifts it to others without asking for anything in return. The charity he is sometimes forced to accept he gives to the those less fortunate.

"And he struggles to put together a meal."  
"The usual dreamer" mutters Hades, buttoning up his shirt and it is not clear if his is criticism or compliment. "And what about the little song-bird?"  
  
Persephone curls her toes into the soil. Tiny daisies appear in the terrain. "Still no idea."  
  
Eurydice must be somewhere, trying to survive on her own, fighting tooth and nail, with only a worn-out coat to warm her nights.  
A girl made stone by winter, who would do anything for the safety of a roof over her head and a hot meal.   
No doubt, however, that his path will still cross with Orpheus's, the dreamer who slept outdoors and who managed to get help from nature with his songs.

The melody is a murmur on Persephone's lips. She hugs her knees.  
  
"Does it have to end like it always does, Hades?"  
  
The god finished buckling his pants, wiping the leaves off the fabric and the juice and fluids from his fingers. He puts his sunglasses back on. "It's as it was written."  
  
The terrible and unyielding Lord of the Underworld, who weights the life of men with whip and scale. It makes the blood boil in Persephone's veins.

Sometimes he feels more malleable, the man she once accepted to wed; and sometimes he's only a cruel king who sentenced a poor girl to ruin on a whim.  
"Don't you have any pity?" she blurts out, her hands clenched into fists. "Aren't you tired of all this?"  
  
Her voice softens, in a light caress to touch the heartstrings of her Lord and husband. He's her light and her darkness, her salvation and her ruin.  
Hades opens his mouth, his answer still not sounding, and for a moment, by the way he barely tilts his head to the side and the curve of his shoulders, Persephone can guess what he would say if he allowed himself the weakness. If.  
"Gods don't have the luxury of being tired."  
  
"Will you kidnap her again?" Persephone insists, grabbing his arm as she has done countless times to stop his anger; to protect the desperate who offered Hadestwon their eternity in exchange for the promise of a loaf of bread and a better life.

Hades looks away. "I don't know. Maybe."  
After all, it's what a force far more powerful than them has already written since the beginning of time. It's an endless cycle nobody, not even gods, can escape.

Details may change, once a poisonous snake, today a bad fall, but not the substance. Whether the Styx is a river or a wall, a moat or a mountain, Orpheus has always found a passage, has always brought Hades to pity and, eventually, has always failed to trust his beloved in those damned last meters before salvation.  
  
"Next time", the goddess murmured, hugging poor Eurydice, "next time".  
  
His voice stern, eyes and soul hid again, Hades turns his neck to look toward the horizon. In the distance, abandoned tracks lie in wait for the passage of the train that leads to his domains. Persephone would swear to have heard the siren's high whistle. But it's only her imagination. Hades adjusts his jacket.  
"It's getting late. It's time for me to go."  
  
She hesitates. Part of her would condemn the world to a perennial fall if that meant letting her spouse live again on the surface among mortals. Stay, it's what her gestures and the air around them say.  
"Wait for me then," she whispers instead, pulling him towards himself for one last kiss. "It won't be long now."  
"I will"

**Author's Note:**

> I just love this musical and the tragedy of the story repeating itself.


End file.
